5 Best Tips How to Stay Anonymous While Using Bitcoin

Intro: Digital Transactions

With the development of the technology, creation of the Internet and development of the contemporary digital world, many of the activities and services can be directly accessed online, from our desktops or smartphones.

Not only did we start communicating with each other via digital environment, but also moved there our businesses and finances. With so many important transactions taking place digitally it's essential to take needed precautions in order to be on the safe side with your precious money.

Security and Anonymity

However, with more and more of our information being gathered online by various third party services, social media sites and advertisers, many users seek some privacy and security outside the regular financial and banking services.

Cryptocurrencies have become the answer to truly decentralized and anonymous payments, with no worries about some third-parties or banks storing the funds or tracking where they are going.

But is paying in BTC rather than by regular wire USD transfer or financial service like PayPal enough to feel truly safe and anonymous? Here we will go through 5 tips on how you could increase your anonymity while using Cryptocurrencies.

1. Transaction Mixing

One needs to remember, that Bitcoin relies on the anonymity, security, encryptions and most importantly - transparency. This means, anyone is able to get access to all of the information about any of the transactions that have ever happened. Such transparency assures that no one is cheating within this ecosystem.

Even though, your name is not directly signed under any of the Bitcoin transactions, as all of the data is encrypted. You are still given a set of random numbers that become your address. And with enough data, your transaction history and monitoring the funds as they go in and out, after some research you could easily be tracked.

That's why it is advised to use "transaction mixing" in order to lose your digital footprint. Instead of sending your money directly to the destination, the transaction gets mixed up and shuffled between numerous other addresses. It then of course gets to your destination with the same amount of funds as it was meant to, however after this procedure, you can't simply find the source within two clicks.

You can use for example, Bitcoin Mixer. For a fee of 2-5% they shuffle your bitcoins using a variety of algorithms and encrypted addresses in order to secure your identity. It is important to check if your Transaction Mixing service providers can really be trusted.

Bitcoin Mixer is very impressive service if you want to maintain your anonymity when you want to make purchases online. It can also be useful if you want to do p2p payments and donations. Service is used to mix a persons funds and give this person some fresh bitcoins. The focus here is on making sure that the blender has the ability to confuse the trail as somebody could try to figure out the source. The best mixer is that one that keeps your anonymity at a max. You want each bitcoin transaction to be very hard to trace.

Bitcoin Mixer doesn't store logs or any history of orders and transactions. They can't give out your information to any organization or individual as they simply don't have any. Moreover, they even delete all emails from contact form within 24 hours after they are read.

Additionally, one can also speed up their regular BTC transaction that got stuck on the network or are being delivered simply too slow.

2. TOR Browser

Regular surfing through the web using popular browsers such as Google Chrome of Firefox may be convenient, however it doesn't provide anonymity in any form. All of your data is openly collected by all of the sites that you visit and obviously by your service provider.

TOR is a specially designed type of browser which, in a similar way to Bitcoin Transaction Mixing services, simply shuffles your Internet location and data across servers and nodes all over the world. That way, any person that wants to track you won't be able to get to know your actual information. Therefore, it becomes extremely difficult to pinpoint the IP address or system from which the message or transaction was broadcasted.

3. Buy Bitcoin in Cash

While the Bitcoin itself is encrypted and anonymous, the sole process of buying it on Cryptocurrency Exchanges is often not. You pay there with a regular bank transfer with all of your information being connected to the account.

There are variety of sites and services which offer an opportunity to buy Bitcoin face-to-face and with cash to hand in order not to leave any digital footprint about the money transaction. The most popular platform for it is currently LocalBitcoins.

You need to find a trustable seller. Try to look only for the ones with positive feedback and high reputation. The more transaction he has made the better. While setting up the meeting, remember to use encrypted messaging apps like for example Telegram or Signal or call him by a public pay phone or a burner phone. Always meet in public places and use public wi-fi to finish the transaction.

4. Change your address frequently

It's always good to get a fresh account from time to time to get a new start and a new digital identity.

If you are using wallets such as Ledger Nano, MyCelium or Trezor which are one of the most popular, you can easily generate as many new Bitcoin addresses as you want. Remember that anyone who knows about your address can see your spending habits and can check how much balance you hold.

5. Smart Passwords

The last thing we will focus on is the most obvious one, however it is the weakest link when it comes to the security of your account and your money, because it is often the one you come up with. And as it's been known for some time already, even though your password may seem secure for you and no other person won't guess it, it doesn't mean that no other computer won't guess it, or simply brute-force guess it. A human can't generate and check thousands of potential passwords, while a simple program can easily conduct such attack. Therefore, it is essential to protect your account with a strong password, taking into the consideration hackers. It should be long, as any other extra character ads even years to the calculation needed to crack it.

Legal Disclaimer: Please remember that trading, buying or any other type of investing in cryptocurrencies should be consider risky and may lead to the loss of all of the invested money. For further information visit Terms and Conditions section on TokenTops. We do not encourage our readers to any kind of financial decisions. Neither tokentops.com nor its parent companies accept responsibility for any loss, damage, or inconvenience caused as a result of reliance on information published on, or linked to, from tokentops.com. We believe that everyone should make their own and in depth research on the particular topic in various sources before making any financial decision and this person should be the only one responsible for the outcome. Our writers do their best to remain unbiased and don't actively support any project. The research is done with various sources, the predictions are based on own believes, analytical skills, experts and community discussions and is intended to convey general information only.